Poison at the PTA

by Laura Alden

I closed my office door, but not quite all the way, and before I even got down on my hands and knees to pull Cookie’s box out from under my desk, I heard the murmur of voices. A slow, strained murmur at first, but then a smooth one.

  Smiling, I grabbed the cardboard flaps and tugged. It would all work out. Lois and Flossie would go back to being friends and the bookstore would go back to being a happy place.

  I sat in my chair and started moving items from the box up to the top of my desk. A Christmas ornament. A flat white paper bag. A fifteen-year-old high school graduation photo. A brochure for an African safari. A ceramic figurine of a football player. A doll. And another dozen or so items that meant absolutely nothing to me.

  I fingered the photo of a young man I didn’t recognize, and wondered.

  This was the revealing information she’d been killed over? This was her insurance policy? A box of innocuous items that couldn’t mean anything to anyone but her?

  I kicked at the box. How stupid to be murdered over something like this. I kicked again and knocked the box on its side. What a stupid, tragic waste of what could have been.

  A rustle of paper made me blink.

  I leaned down and picked up the box. Had . . . ? Yes. A piece of white notebook paper had slipped out from beneath the inside bottom flap. I jiggled the box and three more sheets fell down.

  Then four.

  Five.

  All with line after line of handwriting on them.

  Suddenly, I wished the feeling hadn’t come back to my fingers, because I knew I didn’t want to touch those papers. Didn’t want to see them, didn’t want to read them. They couldn’t contain anything I needed to know.

  Averting my eyes, I gathered up the sheets in one hand. I’d shred them, that’s what I’d do. I’d cut them up into tiny pieces and . . .

  A sheet fluttered to the floor. I grabbed out and, catching it, read the name at the top of the page.

  Kirk Olsen, it said. He has embezzled money from his employer and has agreed to repay it all. I have given him until the end of January to do so, and while, to date he has not, I expect to . . .

  For the first time ever, I regretted my ability to read quickly. I folded the paper shut.

  Only there was more writing on the back. More names.

  Marina Neff.

  Marina . . .

  I smashed the paper into a tight ball. Every single one of those horrible papers went back into the box. I slapped the flaps shut and knew, without a doubt, what I had to do.

  • • •

  I slung my purse over my arm and carried the mostly empty box out to the alley. Out in the chill air, my resolve hardened into a vow of immediate action and I set the box on the pile of snow next to the recycling Dumpster. This would work out fine.

  Cold whipped down the back of my neck as I dug through the bottom of my purse, the final location for any item I ever wanted. I fingered through tissues and car keys, pens and checkbook, wallet and bandages. Was that . . . ? I felt the small square of pressed cardboard. Why I had it, I wasn’t quite sure, but everything in a purse is useful at some point.

  I turned my back to the wind, tore a match out of the Sabatini’s matchbook, and lit it. The flame flared large, then shrank to a friendlier size. Crouching, I touched the match to Cookie’s handwriting. Marina’s name lit up from behind, then, as I watched, was eaten away by the reaching orange light.

  The papers burned. The box burned. And I watched the small blaze with a clear conscience. Yes, I could have given Gus the complete and full contents of the box, but to what end? Cookie’s murderer was in custody. Everything in the box would have been the word of a dead woman against living denials. Besides . . .

  Footsteps tapped slowly down the alley. I looked up, readying myself for the lies I’d have to tell, but then I saw who it was. “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” Marina plodded up, coming to a stop an arm’s length away.

  Besides, thanks to my total and complete inability to look away from printed material when it was in front of my eyes, Kirk Olsen had been the only true lawbreaker in the group. Some names I’d recognized, some I hadn’t, but none of them needed to suffer public humiliation for what they’d done.

  Did Gus need to know that, as a child, Christine Kettunen had ruined Christmas for her four-year-old brother by telling him there was no Santa Claus? Did anyone in law enforcement need to know that a Randall Crowley had cheated on his high school physics final exam? Did anyone other than Cookie care that someone named Dale Faber had bet against the Green Bay Packers in their last Super Bowl appearance? Well, probably a lot of people, but it wasn’t a crime, even in Wisconsin. And I was quite sure that no one needed to know about the vacation Randy Jarvis took at a nudist colony.

  “What’s that?” Marina nodded at the feathery ash.

  “Nothing anyone needs to know about.” I peeked into the Dumpster. Excellent. I reached in and pulled out a cardboard tube I’d tossed in yesterday. Using it in a sticklike manner, I poked at the flames, making sure each and every bit burned until it couldn’t burn any longer.

  Marina watched as I stepped on the last of the hot ash, grinding the powder into small bits, smashing it into unreadable oblivion.

  “Was that from Cookie’s box?” she asked.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets. “She’d kept a list. It was in the bottom of that box. I didn’t find it until just now.”

  “A list?” Marina sounded far away.

  “Yes.” And I was certain I’d never make another list in my life for fear of remembering the horrible one I’d just burned. “Kirk’s name was on there.”

  “Mine, too?”

  I nodded. When I’d read the notes about Marina, so much had become clear. I knew why she’d been acting oddly; I knew why she’d been distant. I knew why she’d been preoccupied and I knew why she hadn’t told me about the woman I’d seen her with at the mall. And I thought I knew why she’d been sitting at her kitchen table sobbing, all those weeks ago.

  “How did Cookie find out?” I asked.

  Marina took a step forward and twisted the toe of her boot on the ash. “That time you saw us at the mall, remember? That was the second time we met. The first time was at a restaurant out by the airport, and for who knows what reason, Cookie was sitting behind us. I didn’t know she was there, didn’t know anyone was there. She heard . . . everything.”

  “And later, Cookie called you. The day I found you crying.”

  She looked up at me, then away. “I couldn’t tell you. I just couldn’t. I didn’t . . .”

  I let out a deep sigh and tipped my head back. The sky was half blue, half clouds. Did that make it partly cloudy or partly sunny? There were so many things I didn’t know. For instance, I didn’t know the difference between deduction and induction. For years, I didn’t realize there was a North American time zone east of the Eastern Time Zone. And, until fifteen minutes ago, I hadn’t known that Marina, as a teenager, had borne a daughter and given her up for adoption.

  “There was a letter, right before Christmas,” Marina said. “She wanted to meet me. To talk about medical history, about her biological father, about family history . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. Since I wasn’t sure it would start up again without a push, I said, “She looks like you.”

  Marina nodded. “Of all my kids . . .” What sounded like a sob got stuck somewhere in her throat. She coughed. Coughed again. “Yeah. She does, doesn’t she?”

  “What’s her name?”

  The ghost of a smile showed on her face. “You’re not going to believe this, but her name is Elizabeth.”

  “You’re right. I don’t believe it.”

  “But she goes by Liz.”

  “Okay, then I do believe.”

  Marina kicked at the ash again. “That day, at the kitchen table, Cookie said having a child out of wedlock was wrong, that I needed to be punished, to make amends. She’d said she’d tell me what I had to do. Only . . .”

  Only Kirk had
stepped in first.

  It’s our duty to make things right, Cookie had told me. It’s black-and-white, she’d said.

  But Cookie was wrong. Life was rarely black or white. I intended to live my life erring on the side of kindness, and I was going to do my best to teach my children to live the same way.

  Kindness. Was there anything more important?

  I heard Marina sniff. When I looked at her, I saw a tear trickling down her cheek. My best friend was in pain, and here I stood, hands in my pockets. Where was that kindness I thought was so important?

  Coughing down my own sob, I stepped close to Marina. Put my arms around her, put my cheek against hers, and held her close.

  “It was the worst thing I ever did,” she whispered, “giving her away, but I knew it was the best thing. I tried to forget about it, about her.”

  “But you couldn’t,” I whispered back. “Of course you couldn’t.”

  She nodded, hugged me back, then pulled away. “I’m so sorry, Beth. I wasn’t sure you’d understand. You’re so smart and strong all the time. And I know all about last night. Winnie called. So if you turn best friends with Claudia, it would only make sense. I wasn’t there for you. I was at home sulking like a whiny teenager.” More tears came down. “I was stupid when I was a kid and I’m stupid now, but I won’t be able to take it if you look at me like I’m the stupidest person on the planet. I just won’t and—”

  “And will you stop already?” I asked. “I’m just as stupid, almost all of the time.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just a front for how smart you really are.” She sniffed, but one corner of her mouth turned up.

  Suddenly, I knew it would be all right. Happiness bobbed in my heart, bouncing around like a bright yellow balloon. “We can both be really stupid and we can both be really smart.”

  “Hmm.” Marina wiped at her eyes. “You might have something there. I mean, you can’t be smart all the time. What we have to do is coordinate our stupidity.” She twisted up a small smile. “You can have Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I’ll take Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. We’ll split Wednesdays.”

  “Why do I have to be the one who’s smart on Mondays?”

  “Okay, we’ll split Mondays instead of Wednesdays.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  She stuck out her hand and we shook. “Friends?” she asked. “Forever and for sure?”

  The sky had been clearing as we’d talked, and now the last shred of cloud whisked out of view. A bright yellow sun shone down from a brilliantly blue winter sky. The day and the future were bright. My children were happy, I was happy, and Marina had come back to me.

  I grinned. “Don’t be stupid.”